Microsoft knew the Kin was laggy and terrible, internal testing videos show

Alexey Zhukov

12:45, November 21, 2012

Microsoft was under no delusions that its doomed Kin phones were in good shape prior to launch, according to some testing videos posted over at Wired’s GadgetLab. The phones are universally bad, and the testers quickly become frustrated with the lag and unresponsiveness.

In the first of three videos, a couple of testers are asked to comment on the phone. “There’s a lag, that lag will make me make mistakes,” says one. “This phone would have gone back if I paid for it.”

“Lots of room to improve,” says tester number two, noting that the handset would be “kind of a turn off” for first-time touchscreen phone users. Slowly, tester two begins to show signs of battered person syndrome, blaming himself for the phone’s lack of responsiveness. “I don’t know if it’s me not tapping enough or just the lag… I’m not sure how much pressure or how long I have to hold.” He continues, “the UI and behavior are really unbalanced… sometimes it’s OK, sometimes it’s really slow.”

In the second video, users make several fruitless attempts to dial phone numbers. The phones refuse to respond to several taps on the same number, while it visibly responds to a series of dialed numbers a few seconds after the sequence is completed. They react to taps as swipes, to swipes as accidental brushes.

The third video shows how the phone behaves when the user moves too fast for it. He attempts to swipe around the interface, but the phone remains unaffected. His swipes increase in frequency and intensity as he tries to get the phone to react at all, but it stops even bumping the screen from side to side and goes catatonic. The tester sets the phone down and watches as it slowly reacts to the stacked-up inputs, dreamily, like a dog running in its sleep.

In the months that followed the Kin’s birth and death, we all tried to figure out what went wrong: marketing, advertising, and pricing were all blamed in turn. But even if those had all aligned in the Kin’s favor, there’s no substitute for, you know, a product that actually works.